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Samuel Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture

www.dabirjournal.org

ISSN: 2470-4040

No.5.2018

Digital Archive of Brief notes & Iran Review

xšnaoθrahe ahurahe mazdåDetail from above the entrance of Tehran’s fire temple, 1286š/1917–18. Photo by © Shervin Farridnejad

The Digital Archive of Brief Notes & Iran Review (DABIR)

ISSN: 2470-4040

www.dabirjournal.org

Samuel Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture

University of California, Irvine

1st Floor Humanities Gateway

Irvine, CA 92697-3370

Editor-in-ChiefTouraj Daryaee (University of California, Irvine)

EditorsParsa Daneshmand (Oxford University)

Arash Zeini (Freie Universität Berlin)

Shervin Farridnejad (Freie Universität Berlin)

Judith A. Lerner (ISAW NYU)

Book Review EditorShervin Farridnejad (Freie Universität Berlin)

Advisory BoardSamra Azarnouche (École pratique des hautes études); Dominic P. Brookshaw (Oxford University);

Matthew Canepa (University of Minnesota); Ashk Dahlén (Uppsala University); Peyvand Firouzeh

(Cambridge University); Leonardo Gregoratti (Durham University); Frantz Grenet (Collège de France);

Wouter F.M. Henkelman (École Pratique des Hautes Études); Rasoul Jafarian (Tehran University); Nasir

al-Ka‘abi (University of Kufa); Andromache Karanika (UC Irvine); Agnes Korn (CNRS, UMR Mondes

Iranien et Indien); Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (University of Edinburgh); Jason Mokhtarain (University of

Indiana); Ali Mousavi (UC Irvine); Mahmoud Omidsalar (CSU Los Angeles); Antonio Panaino

(University of Bologna); Alka Patel (UC Irvine); Richard Payne (University of Chicago); Khodadad

Rezakhani (History, UCLA); Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis (British Museum); M. Rahim Shayegan (UCLA);

Rolf Strootman (Utrecht University); Giusto Traina (University of Paris-Sorbonne); Mohsen Zakeri

(University of Göttingen)

Logo design by Charles Li

Layout and typesetting by Kourosh Beighpour

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Contents

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1 Notes1- Hamid Bikas Shourkaei: La satrapie de Phrygie hellespontique (Daskyleion): des origines

à la chute de l’Empire perse achéménide

2- Stanley M. Burst ein: Ctesias’ Sources: A Suggest ion

3- Kiarash Gholami: Some Remarks on the Inscription and Att ribution of a Transitional Arab-Sāsānian

Dirham from Merv

4- John Hyland: Hyst aspes, Gobryas, and elite marriage politics in Teispid Persia

5- Thomas Jü gel: The Aramaeogram of the Copula in Zoroast rian Middle Persian and a Note

on the 2sg. Optative

6- Firoze M. Kotwal: Incantations For The Fest ival Of The Farmers And For The Consecration

Of Gravel (nīrang ī jashan ī burzigarān o nīrang ī sang-rēzā yaštan)

7- Firoze M. Kotwal: Religious Injunct ion to be Observed when a Zoroast rian Expires During

the Gatha Days

8- Daniel T. Pott s: The lands of the Balahute and Lallari

9- Daniel T. Pott s: The Persian Gulf in the Cosmographia of the Anonymous Geographer of

Ravenna, c. 700 AD

10- Razieh Tassob: Language and Legend in Early Kushan Coinage: Progression and Transformation

Book Reivews11- Carlo G. Cereti: Review of Foltz, Richard. Religions of Iran: From Prehist ory to the Present.

London: Oneworld Publications, 2013. 314pp. ISBN 978-1-78074.

12- Sajad Amiri Bavandpour:

تَذكره اَربيل (وقايع نامه آرِبال)، منت كهن اثر مؤلف ناشناس، ترجمه محمود فاضلی بريجندی، تهران، مركز دايره املعارف بزرگ اسالمی (مركز پژوهش های ايرانی و اسالمی)، ۱۸۵ صص، ۱۳۹۰.

13- Adam Benkato: Review of Barbati, Chiara. The Christ ian Sogdian Gospel Lect ionary E5

in Context. Veröff entlichungen Zur Iranist ik 81. Wien: Öst erreichischen Akademie der

Wissenschaft en, 2015.—357pp.

14- Yazdan Safaee: Aliyari Babolghani, Salman, Taḥrīr-e ʿīlāmi-ye katibe-ye dāryuš-e bozorg

dar bisotūn. pīšgoft ār, dast ur-e ʿīlāmi-ye haḫāmanešī, ḥarfnevisī, tarǧome, moqābele bā

taḥrīrhāye digar, yāddāšthā va vāže-nāme [The Elamite Version of Darius the Great’s Inscrip-

tion at Bisotun. Introduct ion, grammar of Achaemenid Elamite, transliteration, Persian trans-

lation, comparison with other versions, notes and index], Tehran: Našr-e Markaz. 1394š/

2015. Pp. 268. ISBN 978-964-213-272-0.

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© Samuel Jordan Center for Persian Studies & Culture University of California, Irvine

No.5.2018

Digital Archive of Brief notes & Iran Review

ISSN: 2470 - 4040

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Ctesias ‘Sources: A Suggestion1

Stanley M. Burst einCalifornia State University, Los Angeles

Ctesias of Cnidus’ huge—23 book-long—Persika is at once a frust rating and important work, a situ-

ation that is made worse by its being lost except for a handful of epitomes and fragments. On the

one hand, it provided the model for writing universal hist ory in antiquity (Drews 1965: 129-142) accord-

ing to the scheme of the succession of empires—Assyrian, Median, and Persian—and portraying the

courts of these empires as dominated by corrupt eunuchs and intriguing queens (Waters 2017: 20-44).

On the other hand, however, it would be impossible to write much of the hist ory of Achaemenid Persia

without the fragments of the Persika.

Until recently, assessments of the Persika as hist ory were predominantly negative with most schol-

ars agreeing that Ctesias’ claim that he spent seventeen years in residence at the Persian court as

royal physician was, if true, a wast ed opportunity. More recent evaluations, however, have become

more nuanced as scholars have verified some of Ctesias’ claims of autopsy and identified aspect s of

the Persika that seem to derive from Mesopotamian and Iranian sources (Lenfant 2004: XXVII-XXXIX;

Llewellyn-Jones and Robson 2010: 55-65; Nicols 2011: 21-27; Stronk 2011: 394-396).

The evidence for autopsy is particularly clear. Ctesias, for example, provided the first accurate account

in Greek literature of the use of trained Asian elephants in warfare (Bigwood 1993: 542-544; Trautmann

1- I would like to thank Professor C. Tuplin for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this paper.

2018, No. 5ISSN: 2470 - 4040

© Samuel Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture, University of California, Irvine

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2015: 220-223) and the only reference in classical literature to the Behist un inscription, albeit crediting it

to the Assyrian queen Semiramis inst ead of Darius I (Diodorus 2.13.1-2 = Ctesias F 1b.13 Lenfant). More

important, however, has been the recognition of themes derived from authentic Assyrian tradition in

the fragments of Ctesias’ hist ory of Assyria that was contained in the first three books of the Persika,

the so-called Assyriaka. So, while it has been recognized since the decipherment of cuneiform in the

nineteenth century that the basic narrative of Ctesias’ Assyrian hist ory was largely fict ion (Drews 1973:

105-111), J. D. A. MacGinnis (1988: 37-41) demonst rated the exist ence of significant connect ions between

Ctesias’ account of the fall of Nineveh and Assyrian accounts of the rebellion of Shamash-shum-Ukin

against his brother Ashurbanipal (652 BCE-648 BCE). Similarly, G. B. Lanfranchi (2011: 211-219) showed

that much of Ctesias’ description of the eff eminate life st yle of Sardanapallus, supposedly the last king

of Assyria, can be explained in terms of what is known of the Assyrian royal cult of Ishtar.

Litt le progress, however, has been made in explaining how this Assyrian material reached Ctesias.

Ctesias himself claimed to have used the royal archives for his Assyrian hist ory, but this is unlikely since

virtually none of the kings mentioned by him is found in Assyrian or Babylonian records. Not surpris-

ingly, therefore, recent scholars maintain that “oral tradition” was the principal source for the Assyrian

elements in the Assyriaka, but with litt le clarity about its charact er beyond that it reflect ed “traditions

circulating in 5th century Persia concerning the past before their domination” (Lenfant 2004: LIII-LIV).

Missing from recent discussions of Ctesias’ sources, however, has been consideration of the possibility

that traditions concerning Assyrian hist ory were preserved in textual sources circulating in the Persian

Empire that were available to him. In fact , hitherto unnoticed parallels between the Assyriaka and a

unique late fourth century BCE papyrus, P. Amherst 63, raise that possibility.

P. Amherst 63 is a large—3.5 meters long—papyrus discovered near Thebes that contains a miscellany

of Aramaic literary texts writt en in demotic script (Depauw 1997: 40-41; Steiner 1997: 309-327; Kott sieper

2009: 426-429). Most important for the quest ion of Ctesias’ sources is the final text in the collect ion, a

versified narrative of the Babylonian revolt of Shamash-shum-Ukin against his brother Ashurbanipal

that focuses on the unsuccessful eff ort by their sist er Sarit(ah) to reconcile the brothers. Although its

narrative diff ers radically from Ctesias’ sensational account of the overthrow of the Assyrian empire

by an alliance of Medes and Babylonians, the accounts of the preparations for the deaths of their main

charact ers, Shamash-shum-Ukin and Sardanapallus, both share a common feature, the const ruct ion

of a room as part of the pyre in which the king and his entourage would be burned.

Ctesias’ account of the room survives in two versions: a brief one in Diodorus’ Library of Hist ory and

a more detailed one in Athenaeus’ Deipnosophist ae.2

a. (Diodorus 2.27.2 = F 1b.27.2 Lenfant): So, he built an enormous pyre in the palace and heaped

all the gold and silver on it as well as his royal clothing and, aft er shutt ing his concubines

and eunuchs in the room he had prepared in the middle of the pyre, burnt himself and all

the others to death and razed the palace to the ground.

b. (Athenaeus 12.38, p. 529bd = F 1q Lenfant): He made a wooden room inside the pyre 100 feet

2- Translated by Llewellyn-Jones and Robson 2010: 137, 147.

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Samuel Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture

long, and there laid out couches and reclined—not only his wife but his concubines, too,

reclining on the other couches. Seeing that things were going badly, he had sent his three

sons and two daughters to Ninus to the King there, giving them 30,000 talents of gold. He

roofed the room with large thick wooden beams and then put a number of thick pieces of

wood in a circle so that there was no way out. He then placed on the pyre 10,000,000 talents

of gold, 100,000,000 talents of silver, clothing, purple cloths, and all sorts of apparel. Then

he ordered the fire to be lit and it burned for fift een days.

Verbally identical accounts of the const ruct ion of a similar room occur twice in P. Amherst 63, first as

part of the advice given to Shamash-shum-Ukin by his sist er Sarit(ah) aft er he refused to abandon his

revolt and again aft er his defeat by Ashurbanipal’s forces. In the most complete version (Steiner 1997:

325), Sarit(ah) advised her brother to “go from the house of Bel, away from the house of Marduk. Let

there be built for you a house of boughs; a house of st icks do const r<uct >.3 Throw down tar and pitch

and sweet-smelling Arabian perfumes. Bring in your sons and your daughters and your doct ors who

have made you act brashly. When you see how (low) they have sunk on you, let fire burn you together

with your sons and your daughters and your doct ors who have made you act [bra]shly.”

Comparison of these passages is revealing. Despite diff erences in detail resulting from the diff ering

charact er of the works in which they were embedded and the intentions of their authors, they share three

specific similarities that are too close to be accidental. First , unlike the most important Assyrian sources

for the revolt of Shamash-shum-Ukin, the Rassam Cylinder (Luckenbill 1927: 2, 794) and Ashurbanipal’s

Cylinder A (Chavalas 2006: 366), which st ate only that the Assyrian gods threw Shamash-shum-Ukin

into the fire, both Ctesias and P. Amherst 63 depict the deaths of their protagonist s as carefully st aged

suicides. Second, these suicides take place within wooden st ruct ures specially built for that purpose.

Third, both kings force members of their family and entourage to accompany them in death, Shamash-

shum-Ukin his children4 and his doct ors and Sardanapallus his queen, concubines, and eunuchs.

These specific similarities between the preparations for the suicides of Sardanapallus in Ctesias’

Assyriaka and Shamash-shum-Ukin in P. Amherst 63 require explanation, and the most obvious one is

that both authors used closely related sources, presumably an Aramaic account of the revolt of Shamash-

shum-Ukin similar to that found in P. Amherst 63. As elsewhere in his work, however, Ctesias freely

adapted his source for his own purposes, but evidence of its charact er is provided by the relationship

between his account of the revolt against Sardanapallus and the revolt of Shamash-shum-Ukin that

was identified by MacGinnis. Equally important, this work was not unique but, as the Aramaic Ahikar

papyrus proves, other literary works in Aramaic with Assyrian themes exist ed during the Persian period

and might, therefore, also have been accessible to Ctesias (Dalley 2007: 121-131, Kott sieper 2009: 410-430).

3- I have subst ituted literal translations of the Aramaic description of the st ruct ure for the translators more literary “bower” and “booth.”

4- It is likely that Ctesias’ explicit claim that Sardanapallus arranged for the escape of his children reflect s his awareness of a version of the st ory in which they died with their father as in P. Amherst 63.

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2018, No. 5

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